Me and my Thai wife

Post Reply New Topic

haha well if considered having a live in whore is your idea of a relationship then sure you well on your way to "earning it". End of Lesson.

Lol, well I don't think I'd put it quite that way.


I wouldn't put it that way either.

The whole thing sounds, to me, more like an arranged marriage than anything else. The entire concept of marrying for love is fairly new anyway. Romantic stories aside, most people throughout history haven't married for love. Given current divorce rates, it's not like our system is working so well anyway. It's kinda silly to dismiss anything that's not the norm when the norm doesn't work more than half of the time. A lot of times what starts as passionate love turns into passionate hate. Whereas if two people come together under agreed circumstances in which they've both set forth the expectations and both find those expectations reasonable, living together and fulfilling each others needs can turn into a good basis for being happy together. The whole falling-passionately-in-love-and-living-happily-ever-after might make a good fairy tale.. but it's usually a calmer sort of love that lasts. Passionate love can turn into passionate hate way too easily.
There's not just one way to live life.

Like the Buddhists say (um, I think it was the Buddhists..) The secret to happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have.

The problem also, I think the best suited for the long haul are the same men/women who society had told that there is something wrong with them for not being Freudian 'Id' on two legs. The idea seems to go around that if your with someone and they cheated on you for someone more emotively animated that you full out deserved it - that they were just a better human being than you were, you were more reserved therefor showing signs of genetic weakness and past criticisms that the other person had never had to endure due to their better genetics and what society let them get away with. In that climate, how is anything involving commitment or 'relationship' supposed to work....

I know your point that it doesn't take massive amounts of money (for Americans) to support a family in southeast Asia, but your comments are not addressing my point. What I'm trying to emphasize in this thread is the risk of exploitation, which does not come from the sheer magnitude of money involved (which you seem to be focusing on). That risk comes from what happens if the relationship fails for ANY reason. Sure, there's no harm if this and if that... but you've listed a lot of ifs there. Who do you think is going to suffer worse if the relationship fails?

A lonely, depressed Aspie who is financially stable and ok is better off in life than an entire family in southeast Asia living in rural poverty.

And you can try to add that "if" the relationship fails, then shouldn't the agreement be better described than that... but expectations can change, and people change. Their needs change. Then all you need is one person to want to back out of the agreement for the whole thing to fall apart.

You seem to be looking at this from just the Westerner's point of view, that it's a simple business-like arrangement that doesn't cost the Westerner very much. It's that precisely that helps to increase the risk of exploitation. The Westerner doesn't have much to lose if the arrangement fails. If you have never seen third-world rural poverty, I strongly encourage you to do so. As a second-generation American of southeast Asian descent and who has seen own family members in rural poverty, I am able to see the other side of it. Any time you have a relationship where one side needs it more than the other, significant problems will result and the risk of exploitation is greater... and it doesn't matter whether that relationship is based on love or is a business arrangement.

Lol, I like the way you put that!


What if any relationship fails? There's always that risk. So if one party is an aspie who tends to get caught up in special interests and needs someone who can be okay with that, and the other is a woman who has lived in poverty and can appreciate living in relative luxury with a man who may not be the most attentive person in the world, and may be a bit quirky, but is generally good to her and her family.. It's certainly not the worst arrangement in the world. I'm trying to look at it from both sides, but my "both sides" tends to be more a middle than an actual two sides. This all depends on both parties being decent people, of course..

Yes, she was.

It might not be your cup of tea, but you could show some respect.

I doubt this is the cup of tea most people would want to be honest : /

You made a thread, you should have been prepared for negative response to likewise for positive ( well cant see that one coming)

Is this the school and college forum?

As long as both parties understand the limitations of the relationship. You can't really criticise a mutual arrangement. I don't believe everyone that is interested in this sort of this is realistic about that. Some people exchange money before even meeting and they never show up.

I think I do see your point though I am filtering it through my own Western (American) view on what marriage is. The Western view of marriage is a partnership between peers. That's flat out impossible in this sort of arrangement. It's more of an employer/employee relationship. And then the likelihood of exploitation gows up because in the 1st world husband/3 rd world wife set-up, she is an employee who quite literally can't afford to get fired. She must do all the work of ensuring that her 1st world husband never wants to divorce (fire) her because she can't risk what will happen if he does. Unlike a Western woman who can say "I won't put up with any more of this. I'm leaving" she not only can't do that, she has to make sure that he never does it either. So she must spend her entire married life catering to him so that divorce doesn't happen. Exploitation seems a near inevitability.

Speaking of paid relationships, this guy



is now about 90 years old, and spent his life perpetually bringing in a new series of live-in girlfriends. Once they turn about 25 and the cellulite starts showing, they are too old, and it is time to bring on a new bunch.

Is anyone here critical of this arrangement?

The problem is that he can afford to get divorced and she can't. So the entire burden of making sure the relationship doesn't fail falls on her. Which means she must put up with things no Western woman ever would because a Western woman would just walk. That's the exploitation angle.

Marriage is a bizarre social convention anyway. All the things that it claims to be about ("covenant", "institution", "sacred", "commitment", etc) it is actually not. A couple can mutually choose to commit to those responsibilities whether or not to enter into marriage, and a marriage means nothing other than some people got married and have different legal status as a result.

So really the idea of a "sham" marriage is somewhat arbitrary, and only tend to come uip in cases of immigration. If government stuck their noses out of private choices such as marriage, instead of decimating on the basis of marriage, then they would be having to decide what constitute a "real" marriage.

As for being "symbolic", anything can be symbolic and is nothing unique about the symbolism implied in marriage.

Actually, if they divorce, then she will come out ahead financially.

If he brings her to America, and if she is pretty, then there will be plenty of men trying to make approaches to her. If she remains loyal to her husband (as most do), then, well,

http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/Bibl ... lomon.html

There is a point there. It is made worse by marriage law. However I think she could still walk, even if they remained married she could work, and that money is worth more in Thailand. In fact that is how many of these marriages work. They only really stay together, if there is an added advantage of having a sugar daddy.

I think you can have some sympathy but only up to a point. These people know what they are getting into. It is not as if they don't have access to the internet in the first place. On the whole they are ambitious lower middle class from eastern Europe or Asia.